


but you’re the one that i want; is that really so wrong?

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (a bit anyway. maybe more like ‘bittersweet chocolate jon snow’), Canon Compliant, Confessions, Dark Jon Snow, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Love Confessions, Mild Sexual Content, Political Marriage, Romance, a solid read for ‘stark loyalists’ tho, also probably troped tf out, at least i’m self-aware, but more, gotta shake out my salt sometimes, not dany-friendly so don’t read if you’re gonna be a dick about it okay i’m Tired, season 8 spec, the word ‘kiss’ appears roughly ninety thousand times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-19 23:53:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16544756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: In light of the North’s demand for a marriage alliance, Jon and Sansa have some long-harbored matters to discuss.(slightly-altered title from “this feeling,” by the chainsmokers ft. kelsea ballerini)





	but you’re the one that i want; is that really so wrong?

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: does this fic feature prominent phrases i’ve used countless times before in other canon-era works? bruh. probably, if my deja vu the whole time was any indication.
> 
> the important thing, though, is i’ve finally gotten the titular song out of my head (it’s a great song but dear god there’s only so much repetition a gal can take)
> 
> anyway ENJOY

“I know this isn’t what you want.”

They’re sat together by the hearth in the lord’s chambers. _Our chambers soon enough_ , Jon thinks. He’s ashamed of the thrill that shoots through his bones at the thought.

That shame has been with him longer than he’d care to admit. Perhaps since the first time they’d shared a hearth since leaving Winterfell. And now here they sit, so many moons later, and Jon wants her just as much. The only difference is that now it seems he’s meant to have her.

There should be more joy in this moment, more relief, more hope for what’s to come. But Jon’s revelry is locked deep within him, silenced by his doubts that she should want him the same way.

He inclines his head to study her profile, silhouetted like some Northern ghost from the tales Old Nan used to tell them. The firelight catches in her hair, painting her in hues of bright scarlet and burnished bronze.

He wants to trace the shadows on her skin. His hand clenches into a fist atop his thigh to stop himself.

_Maybe she doesn’t want you to touch her._

Sansa tilts her own head to meet his gaze. She offers a smile meant to be reassuring, but all Jon sees is an unerring melancholy when she tells him, “It’s not some great heartache. I’m not in love with someone else.”

“Sansa...” His hand reaches for her now, with an instinctual need to protect her, but it stops short, hovering above hers as he awaits permission. “Don’t say that.”

“Isn’t it the truth?”

_No. There’s no one else. Don’t you know by now?_

“You know it isn’t.”

He’d told her the truth — the whole, incontestable thing of it — when he’d returned, with the pretender queen and her Targaryen army at his back.

He can only pray that she still believes in him.

_//_

_“Trust me,” he murmured in her ear as he took her into his arms. The eyes of their family, their men, and the foreign army were on them. Jon nestled into the crook of her neck to whisper the words. “I listened.”_

_Not an hour passed until they were locked together in the lord’s chambers, arguing furiously, nonetheless._

_“I told you not to go,” Sansa spat at him. The venom in her voice was far surpassed by hurt, and Jon wished dearly to claw off his own skin if it meant he could take away her pain. “I told you it wasn’t safe. I reminded you of what the Targaryens did to our family. Need I remind you again? You waged a war against the Boltons for our home, only to turn tail and_ _give it away! Tell me why, Jon.”_

 _Petyr’s words echoed in her ears…_ I heard gossip, that the Dragon Queen is quite beautiful…

_“Do you want to marry her? Is that it?” Sansa demanded to know. She had every right to know. The hurt spilled from her tongue as assuredly as the tears that shone in her eyes. “You handed her our home as a wedding present?”_

_“No.” The word was sharp and short, like the knife that had taken Jon’s life. “I only did what I had to. All I’ve done since I came back is what I’ve had to do. And it’s all been for you, Sansa,” he told her, though she must know that, surely she must. “Everything I’ve done, has been to keep you safe.”_

_“And I told you to stop trying to protect me! Look where it’s gotten us now.”_

_“I did it for you,” he told her again. She didn’t understand; he had to make her understand. “It was all for love of you.”_ Because I love you.

_“That’s not what I wanted.” Sansa wondered if he knew what, precisely, she meant by ‘that.’ She wondered if she knew it herself. “I don’t deserve to be loved like that.”_

_“Aye, you don’t. But you deserve better than I could give you,” Jon said, disgusted with himself, “and all I have to offer is your safety. No matter how many times you tell me to stop trying to protect you, I can’t. I_ won’t _, I won’t stop. It’s all I’ve known since I’ve come back. Keeping you safe has kept me alive. I’m a greedy, selfish man, Sansa,” he said, voice low as his eyes darkened, as they burned straight through to her heart. “There’s nothing for me here if you’re gone. So don’t tell me to stop. I hate what I did, but it was for you — I only thought of you.”_

 _Sansa blanched, then scoffed. “You_ thought _of me?”_

Think of you, lust after you, want you, need you, obsess, dream, crave… What have I not done, what have I not felt, to soothe my ache for you?

_“You’re the first thought on my mind,” Jon confessed, with as much steely assurance as he’d possessed as a youth at the Wall. “Always.”_

_She had no answer to that. So Jon continued, voice lower still, gravelly, tired from so many moons of telling lies when he wasn’t holding his tongue._

_“I had no choice, Sansa. Not in any of it. Whether or not I bent the knee didn’t matter. I was her prisoner. She saw me as her lesser. All of this, all I’ve done, has been to make sure she didn’t see me as her enemy, too.” Jon’s memory flashed images of dragons, of their destruction, of Daenerys’ anger on the shore when Tyrion Lannister’s plan had set her back… “We would be dead already if she thought that. Please believe me when I tell you I didn’t know of any other way.”_

_Sansa’s anger dissipated in an instant. She believed him. She knew. For hadn’t she done the same in King’s Landing?_

_“What do we do now?” she asked him, and Jon felt the weight upon his heart ease with her acceptance._

_“First, we defeat the Night King. Then…”_ If I’m still alive to see to it… _“We take back Winterfell.”_

_At that, she gave him a smile; it was a tremulous thing, but a spark of hope held the corners of her lips. “We’ve done it once before.”_

_“Aye.” Jon took her by the shoulder to tug her close, to press his lips to her forehead as he’d done when the Stark banners adorned their castle once more. “We have.”_

_//_

“I know,” Sansa tells him now, quietly. She looks to his hand, still ghosting over the back of hers. “I only —”

“Don’t.” Jon’s other hand comes up to cradle her face. His thumb smooths across her cheekbone, tracing the shadows there like he’d so desperately wanted all night. He feels her shudder in time with his skipping heart.

Tentatively, Sansa takes his hovering hand in hers; then, surer now, she interlaces their fingers. She squeezes, and Jon’s eyes darken, two bits of coal in the firelight of their bedroom.

_Ours._

He can feel his face soften as he gazes upon her. It’s been that way from the start. He’s always known the way he looks at Sansa — tender, attentive, as if there’s no one else in the world and like there’s no one else he wants.

_There isn’t._

When was the last time he’d looked at someone, the way he looks at her?

_//_

_He’d come back wrong. How could he not? He’d died, with blades in his heart and without question. And then he’d come back, an unnatural thing, a slight to the gods he never saw, and all his cold heart wanted was her._

_His life before was nothing but an echo, a fog, a memory he could never quite capture. She made him Jon again._

_If the gods were true, how could they have not meant her for him?_

_He hadn’t wanted to stay here afterwards, in the North, the only home he’s ever known. He’d wanted to take her south, as far as south goes — somewhere warm, where the sun would shine in her hair, where she could breathe the salty-sweet air and feel its freedom._

_He’d wanted to run away with her by his side. Instead, he’d fought for her — for her honour, their home, their family and its birthright. So shouldn’t it be right, then, that now he rules their land with her beside him?_

_And now the North demanded more than just an alliance in name._

//

“Marry me, Sansa,” Jon husks in the privacy of the lord’s chambers, silent but for the crackle of the hearth-fire and the whistling winter winds outside. “Not because it’s what the North wants. It’s what _I_ want.”

He presses his forehead to hers with a sense of urgency, so potent that Sansa has to catch her breath and he’s barely touched her. Her pulse skips beneath his fingertips and he’s reduced to panting his next words:

“Be my wife —” a kiss to the corner of her mouth “— because you want me by your side.”

“Yes,” she breathes, without the hesitation that had so often held back them both. They have no need for it now.

A godsend, truly, for his patience has long outrun its course.

He tilts his head, and slants his mouth against hers.

She tastes, he thinks as he drinks her in, like the promise of spring.

_//_

_The great hall hummed with a tension that burst as soon as the news broke, that the northmen had unwittingly crowned a Targaryen king, only for him to hand the title to his aunt._

_Under cover of the tabletop, Sansa gripped his hand when the accusation of ‘Traitor!’ rang across the stone walls of their home._

_Arya took the opportunity to slam her dagger into the high table. Silence fell as the northerners warily eyed her blade; they’d seen her execute Petyr Baelish, and they did not wish to fall at the mercy of the Starks’ justice._

_Sansa was the first to address their concerns, their riotous anger. She need be the only one to speak at all. The North bent to her will, to her compassion, conviction, to the clear cadence of her voice — Jon saw how she’d made them love her._

_His heart swelled with pride while, at the next table, Daenerys seethed._

Careful _, Jon thought to himself. Her eyes were smoldering, jaw locked, spine rigid in her seat. Outside, he could hear the dragons screech._

_The Northerners heard it, too, and they called for an agreement:_

_Eddard Stark’s Targaryen ward would wed their late lord’s daughter, to bind the North and the South, and to gain the trust and allegiance of the men who had sworn themselves to him when — as Lord Glover said — they ‘hadn’t known any better.’_

_Under the table, Jon squeezed Sansa’s hand tight as the hall erupted once more._

_Again, Arya silenced the din, this time by slamming her shoe repeatedly against the high table. Silence fell once more, grand speeches made — by Arya, Bran, Lyanna Mormont, Lord Royce… But they were all only words to Jon, as the blood rushed and pounded in his ears, as he held Sansa’s hand to ground himself._

_The Spider was the next to speak. “If I may…” he began, with a deadly look to Daenerys as he spoke of the good of the realm, of alliances against the wars to come, of what would benefit what was left of the kingdoms thereafter._

_“I knew your father well.” He inclined his head to Sansa, but the message to Daenerys was clear —_ Just as I knew yours _, and there is danger, chaos, in the Mad King Aerys’ daughter. “There was much spoken of you upon his death. ‘The Key to the North,’ we called you. And now we call you King,” he added to Jon, before he addressed Sansa anew. “I think, my lady, that there would be no finer rulers to unite the realms, than the woman who holds this country — so grand and untameable — in her hands, and the man who won it back in battle.”_

_There was a calmness, a finality, to his last words as he lifted his goblet in a toast:_

_“To the King and Queen.”_

_There was nothing further to be said. Sansa turned to Jon immediately, instinctually, and he offered her a warm, indulgent smile._

_“The North is yours,” he rumbled, as the sounds of their men unsheathing their swords for her filled the great hall._

Ours _, he thought, as Bran smiled serenely and Arya placed her dagger before her sister in tribute._

_The dragons screeched again, furious and feral; but this time, no one heard._

_//_

It is not with a wild, reckless passion that he loves her — no, it is a subdued devotion born of trust, and she trusts him, implicitly, not to be wild and reckless with her.

He would not betray her by loving her so carelessly.

Because Sansa is not wild or reckless; she is _home_.

Jon kisses her as if that’s what he’d come back from the dead for. He holds her fast to him, tangling his fingers in the rich auburn waterfall of her hair; and he thinks that if only he keeps on kissing her, he may never die again.

The fire _pops!_ in its grate when Sansa’s lips part beneath the press, the gentle coaxing, of his. Jon takes her sweet breath like it’s what he had been breathing for, ever since his return from the dark.

The night sky peeking through the window deepens as their kiss follows suit: vast and endless and stricken with stars.

“I love you,” Jon murmurs into her mouth, so that she knows it, without the shadow of a doubt.

When she tells him that she loves him, too, with her hands wrapped so securely around his, a star falls above the courtyard. Its light blinks like a beacon of some sort of hope, and it’s more than Jon’s felt in two lifetimes’ worth of wishing.

_//_

_“I’m going to ask Sansa for her hand.”_

_Jon relayed the news stoically, matter-of-fact, from the safe distance of Daenerys’ doorway. She tutted, dissatisfied._

_“If I’d known you lusted after your sister, perhaps I would have guessed you were a Targaryen from the start.”_

_“My cousin,” Jon corrected her. Though it didn’t matter; he’d wanted Sansa for far longer than he’d known the truth of his birth. Once-dead men had no need for honour._

_“Your cousin, then,” Daenerys said, but it didn’t matter to her, either. “You needn’t ask her for anything. The North demanded it. I give my consent, if it’s what needs to be done for our agreement to continue.”_

_Her temper simmered just on the surface of madness. She did not consent at all, and Jon was finished placating her to get what he needed. She would no longer be swayed by his efforts, for now she knew them to be what they were all along: lies. Every last one._

_“I don’t need your permission,” he growled. “Only hers.”_

_“That’s not the way political alliances are done.”_

I want to give her more _, Jon thought._ She deserves her love song.

_But those were not things which concerned his aunt. He would not share something with her that belonged to himself and Sansa alone._

_So he said only, “It’s the way I choose to have it done.”_

_Daenerys stared at him. Unblinking, unwavering, as though she expected something else, something more, from him. He knew what it was; he just didn’t have a reason to be who she wanted anymore._

_She wanted him to be subservient. She wanted the false promise of his kingdom, of the knee he hadn’t quite bent, to be proven true when it never had been at all. She would allow him his life, if only he devoted it wholly to her. She would not trust him — her brother’s son, displaced heir to the throne she so coveted — otherwise._

_But ‘otherwise’ is all Jon was willing to give._

_After what had transpired since their arrival, she hardly trusted him as it was; what difference would his honesty make now?_

_The quiet chasm between them stretched on, until Daenerys filled it:_

_“How long?”_

_“How long what?”_

_Her jaw tightened, to keep her patience from snapping entirely. “_ How long _have you preferred her to me?”_

_“From the beginning.” The truth tasted so sweet on his tongue, and he thought Sansa would taste even sweeter._

_A tic started in Daenerys’ temple. She was losing her already half-gone mind. Jon saw as it began to unravel, too quickly to be stopped, and his hand found Longclaw’s pommel in his belt._

_“Let me be clear,_ Your Grace _.” The title dripped with the utmost disdain. She wondered how she’d never heard it before. “From the start, I’ve done everything for her. To keep her safe, to give her something to live for beyond the war, just as she did for me.”_

_“You never spoke of her,” Daenerys said, hoping to catch him in a lie that would, for once, be to her liking. “Never breathed a word.”_

_“I wouldn’t have you use her against me. She’s not a pawn in your game, she is Queen in the North,” he reminded her of that morning’s events. He would not let her forget. “You will have to burn the whole of it if you want to see her dethroned.”_

_Daenerys’ gaze was cold, eyes devoid of anything that once might have distinguished her from the Night King. But now, she wanted destruction, nothing but her own victory, above all else._

_“Will I have to burn you as well?”_

_“You’d have to burn me first,” Jon advised, just as cold, “or I swear to the gods I’ll take you with me.”_

_“Is that a threat?”_

_His hand tightened on Longclaw. “Come near her, and it will be far more than that.”_

_Jon left her with those words, nothing more, and the sharp slam of the door behind him._

_When dawn broke, Daenerys and her dragons were gone._

_//_

“Sansa —” Her name is naught but a breathless whisper, murmured so softly, but _desperately_ , into her hair. Jon trails open-mouthed kisses across her jaw while he rucks up her skirts with frantic hands.

He says it like a plea. His hands, however impatient, pause, and he searches her face for some sign as he waits for her to speak. He won’t take her tonight — _ever_ — if she isn’t willing to have him.

In answer, she runs her fingers along the line of his beard, up through the scar that slashes his eyebrow in two. Her eyes are bright yet dark in the firelight.

“It’s alright, Jon,” she promises, and seals it with her lips once again pressed to his.

It’s all the encouragement he needs.

He makes quick work of her dress, unlacing the back and divesting her of the satin skirts she’d stitched herself. He’s careful not to rip them, however much he might like to in his eagerness.

He rains kisses up her neck, stopping only to groan her name again in her ear when she undoes the fastenings of his jerkin and vest. His breath catches sharply when her delicate hands find his scars.

She follows their path with her fingertips, just as she’d done with the one that mars his face.

“Oh, Jon…” Sansa starts to whisper, but he stops her worries with his mouth on hers.

 _No need for tears, sweet girl_. He wipes them from her cheeks, soothing her warm skin with the coolness of his. _They don’t hurt anymore._

He winds his arms around her, and hoists her up along with him, carrying her like his bride to the bed they’ll soon share every night once the war is done.

Now, he maps the shadows the firelight makes upon every inch of her skin. The darkness dances in every curve, and Jon follows it step-for-step.

Slowly, he pulls away the thin straps of her shift, as her hands drop between them to undo his trousers. All the while their lips cling, sweet murmured words tethering them to one another whenever they have need for a breath.

Jon had waited a lifetime for this; now that he has her, he means to savor every moment.

Fingers through her hair, mouth wherever she wants it. Her own explores him, from his lips down to his neck, and her tongue tastes the rapid beat of his pulse as his hands skim up her thighs.

And then his head follows, down and down, still kissing as he goes… Hands up and up, chasing the shadows, itching for the warmth between her legs.

Soon he finds how right he was — Sansa does indeed taste sweeter than any truth he’s ever known.

He brings her to peak just like that: palms caressing her hips, holding them in place as he laves her cunt with a hungry kind of love. _I’ve waited so long…_ He moans along with her, as her fingers twist into his curls and his name spills from her kiss-swollen lips, again and again, in a litany of gasps that could keep him warm through the longest, harshest of winters.

 _Such a winter is upon us_ , he knows. But he won’t feel a bit of it.

Sansa lets him kiss her on the mouth when he’s finished. His hardness is hot against her stomach and he whispers, rough and needy, “Tell me you want me.”

Her nails bite into his neck and he whines, wanting more. “I want you.” She plucks kisses from him, _more and more_ , like she’s been starving for them just as he has. “Tell me, again, tell me you love me.”

Jon drags the tip of his nose along her jaw, up to her ear, and he tells her _I love you_ just as he thrusts inside of her.

 _This is sweeter still_ , he thinks before he is too utterly consumed, surrounded, drowning in her, to think of anything at all.

After, they lay just as they were during: Jon braced above her, his weight a comfort to Sansa as he brushes tender touches along her hairline, down her waist, overtaken by his need to commit every part of her to memory.

“We’ll wed in the godswood tomorrow,” he says when he’s found his voice again. It’s low and scratchy, and he can feel the goose pimples raise on Sansa’s skin beneath his steady touch. “For the North.”

“For the North,” she agrees, for it’s what they’d vowed to their people.

Jon’s hand goes to her face, to cradle it, to trace the shape of her lips with his thumb, as he pledges a new oath: “But I promise, Sansa, when this is all over, we’ll have a proper ceremony.”

She smiles — a soft, carefree thing that reminds him of all they’d had before leaving Winterfell so long ago. It reminds him, too, that they might have it all again.

“Will you dance with me then?” she wants to know.

“All night,” Jon swears. He presses his chapped lips, tingling with the sensation of loving her so soundly, just between her eyebrows. He feels her sweet, contented sigh upon his neck. “And for the rest of our lives.”

_//_

_“We need to trust each other. We have so many enemies now.”_

_And, in the end, they’d conquered them all._

_//_

When the wars are done, Jon keeps his promise.

They marry again in the spring, as the cool white sunshine rises high past the horizon, and the snow gives way to the Northern ground beneath their feet.


End file.
